A new study found that robots are taking the jobs of humans and are lowering salary. For every new robot added to the workforce, it results to a loss of between 3 and 5.6 jobs in the local commuting area while pay in the surrounding area drops between 0.25 and 0.5 percent according to an analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study was based on the local data stretching from 1990 and 2007. The research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo indicates that industrial robot pose negative effect on employment in the United States.

Researchers have learned that one new robot per thousand workers cuts the employment-to-population ratio by 0.18 percentage points to 0.34 percentage points. Meanwhile, it reduces wages by 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. Between 1993 and 2007, there was an increase of at least one new industrial robot for every thousand workers in the US.

Per the study, effects of robots in employment are more pronounced in manufacturing, particularly in routine manual, blue collar, assembly and related occupations. Their addition to the workforce is also likely to affect workers with less than college education. "Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups,” the authors wrote in the study titled “Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets.”

Acemoglu and Restrepo said the number of jobs lost to robots so far has been limited because there are comparatively few industrial robots in the US. However, if there would be more robots over the next two decades, the future summative implications of their presence may become more evident.

Furthermore, researchers estimate that robots may have affected the wage gap between the top 90th and bottom 10 percent by 1 percent point between 1990 and 2007. The researchers expect that if the number of industrial robots quadruples by 2025, employment-to-population ratio may be lowered 0.94 to 1.76 percent. Wage growth between 2015 and 2025 may drop 1.3 to 2.6 percent. Research consultancy Forrester said artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic automation will eliminate 16 percent of US jobs by 2025.

But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he does not worry about robots displacing American workers. “In terms of artificial intelligence taking over American jobs, I think we're so far away from that that it's not even on my radar screen,” he told Axios’ Mike Allen. Mnuchin claims he is optimistic and thinks robots help create productivity.

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